National Review Online blogger Ed Whelan attacked[1] the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division for assigning two gay attorneys to the team of attorneys working on Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, a case[2] in which the Supreme Court will address the extent to which religious organizations can engage in discrimination without running afoul of sex discrimination law.

In a blog post, Whelan quoted discredited[3]research[4] from Pajamas Media to attack one of the attorneys, Aaron Schuham, for his previous position with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an organization dedicated[5] to preserving the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

But Whelan then went a step further, stating that Schuham has a "same-sex partner [who] is ... Chris Anders, federal policy director for the ACLU's LGBT Rights project." Whelan further reported that another Justice Department attorney working on the case, Sharon McGowan, "was also a staffer on the ACLU's LGBT Rights project" and that she is married to a woman who is "the Family Equality Council's 'federal lobbyist on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender family issues.' "

Whelan then used this information to spin a conspiracy theory about the Justice Department possibly using the discrimination case as a step in their agenda to "have gay causes trump religious liberty":

Thus, insofar as personnel is policy,* it may well be that the Obama DOJ's hostility to the ministerial exemption in the Hosanna-Tabor case is part and parcel of a broader ideological agenda that would have gay causes trump religious liberty.

So, in Whelan's opinion, should all gay lawyers have been barred from working on a case that deals with the application of anti-discrimination laws to religious freedom, or just the ones who were previously gay-rights activists or have same-sex partners who are gay-rights activists? Or is it OK to assign gay lawyers to the case, but only if the Justice Department takes a position more to Whelan's liking? Whatever Whelan meant, it's a ridiculous argument.